Blast It Out!

This just in!

I’m adding a monthly intermediate-level class to my roster. This is ideal for folks who want a playful, supportive space in which to explore some more challenging aspects of practice.

We’ll attend to alignment of the body heart and mind. We’ll play with stamina and resilience. We’ll dig deeper into some of the more elusive poses and support the journey through pranayama (breathwork) and sankalpa (wholehearted intention). “Practice class” means that I’ll be doing the yoga with you. Join me!

If you’re not sure whether this class is for you, why not try it out and see? We’ll still have a warm, welcoming, and friendly vibe going. You can still/always pause and chill and rest and modify. The main difference is that this class will be a bit longer (90 minutes) and will have a baseline more challenging amount and level of poses.
Let me know if you have questions!

For the first time (and hopefully not the last), I’m offering a virtual yoga class.

It’s been snowing all day here in Durham, and I’m afraid I cannot host my regularly weekly Yoga for Queers and Misfits / InQlusive Yoga class. So I’ve decided to offer this opportunity for folks to join remotely.

How it works

Hop on over to my Square store to buy a class, for $5, 7, 10, or 15. After you check out, I’ll send you a link to join over Zoom. That’s it! You can join with just audio or from your computer/with video. It’s experimental, but let’s see how it goes.

The winds of change are settling in. Just when we got acclimated to the heat of summer, fall arises to remind us of the constancy of impermanence.

The transition to fall doesn’t have to be jarring, disruptive, or depressing. If we learn to work with the seasonal shifts, we can welcome and even relish the opportunities that fall provides to slow down, turn in, and get grounded.

Instead of resisting fall or stumbling through, with the help of yoga and Ayurveda, we can Fall with Grace.

Fall with Grace

Skillfully navigate the transition to Fall by embracing the seasonal invitation to Slow Down, Turn In, Get Grounded

Thursdays 7:45 – 9pm at Durham Yoga
September 7 – October 26
8 Week Series $108 / Drop-in $15
*Sign up for the whole series by Monday, September 4th and receive two special offerings – a Fall Survival Kit and a specialized and detailed guide to managing your doshas.

Three people are dead, dozens more injured, and many of us are reeling from the events in #Charlottesville yesterday. Yesterday’s violence, planned and executed by white nationalists, the KKK, white supremacists, alt-right, and others, in collusion with the cops and other authorities, is confirmation of what we already know. White supremacy is alive and well in this country, in our midst, inside of the hearts and minds and homes and bodies of white folks.

What I know for sure right now: I am scared, feeling isolated, and full of emotion. In the spirit of wanting to reduce isolation, foment connection, and increase collective capacity to hold grief and move towards right action, I’m offering an embodied grief space today.

Reflecting on yesterday’s events in Virginia, Adrienne Maree Brown said, “We have to grieve and feel and strategize in motion…”

I offer this space in that spirit, and in my capacity as a therapist, healing justice worker, trauma-informed yoga teacher, queer woman, anti-oppression trainer, and white anti-racist activist who is working in accountable relationship in my community.

I do not presume that this is what everyone needs right now, but I am feeling like its part of what I need, and what I can offer. I’ve reached out to folks I’m connected with here in community – both People of Color leaders and healers, as well as other white folks committed to the multi-racial work of ending white supremacy and racism – and the folks I’ve connected with are offering their support and encouragement to move forward with this space, though many are already committed to and present in their own spaces and formations.

This space will include:

reflection

gentle movement to connect with the body and move energy and emotion

opportunity for pair or small group sharing/listening (solo work is an option too)

We are in the time of Cancer. The watery depths of connectivity. As Chani Nicholas reminds us, “What is moist becomes permeable and able to join with another.” This is a time of choosing care and connection over corruption and cowardice. This is a time for loving and protecting each other, as Assata enjoins us. “Care is our greatest currency. When we invest in caring for ourselves, each other, and the world around us, the returns are invaluable,” Chani says.

This is the time to evoke the nurturing, equalizing, and expansive power of water. To make ourselves vessels of care, vehicles of connection.

Join me tonight at Yoga for Queers and Misfits as we tap into the depths of our own capacity for compassion, care, and connection.
5:45 – 7:05 at Health Associates on Broad St.

Staying focused on our foundational miraculous nature is actually very hard work in our modern culture of deconstruction. We are socialized to see what is wrong, missing, off, to tear down the ideas of others and uplift our own. To a certain degree, our entire future may depend on learning to listen… –Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown

I finally received my copy of Emergent Strategy (a birthday gift from my beloved) and I’m already underlining basically every word. I have been following adrienne maree brown‘s work for some time now, ever since I had the privilege of meeting her more than ten years ago at a week-long Direct Action training organized by the Ruckus Society. She is a powerhouse of information and inspiration, of sacred strategy and irreverent insurgence. Her book is everything right now. Hop on over to a local bookstore and get yourself a copy.

Some of you might know adrienne’s work without realizing it. For example, an excerpt of her writings went sort of viral last year in the midst of last summer’s uprisings which arose in response to another brutal wave of police murders of Black and Brown people. (Often it was shared without attribution…and it is still getting circulated so please do me a favor: if/when you see it shared without credit, please comment that it came from adrienne maree brown @adriennemareebrown. Folks need to be credited for their brilliance! And more folks need to know about adrienne’s work.)

Emergent Strategy has me meditating on so many things, and in many ways is an invitation to return home to some of the earliest teachings I received while on the path of yoga and transformation. Specifically, the opening passage I shared in this post has me thinking about the practice of looking for the good. It is a radical practice – in the context of disaster capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy – to train ourselves to first see beauty, connection, and Light. It is a spiritual practice to choose first to see the ways that we are connected, brilliant, and always/already whole and complete. While it might be a relatively basic or subtle shift, it is anything but simple.

Join me in class tomorrow while we exploring the deeply spiritual and transformative potential of learning to meditate on the magic…to look for the good…to focus first on possibility and potential.